


Recursion

by mystivy



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-02
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-13 10:22:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/502484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mystivy/pseuds/mystivy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a moment, during Wimbledon, when things felt as they once were, before Roger’s marriage, before the twins...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recursion

**Author's Note:**

> I began this before we knew that Rafa wasn't going to be playing the USO (or indeed probably anything before the new year). So the scenes in New York and London, I hope you can just go with them. (At least they might work as some kind of balm during this long injury break.)

He walks the shore in Porto Cristo as the night falls, and in his pocket his phone buzzes.

_So I guess I have a chance this time? ;)_

He’s still reading it when the next one arrives.

_I am sorry about your knee._

The water surges and retreats and Rafa kicks his sneakers off and stands where the strongest waves can reach him. There was a moment, during Wimbledon, when things felt as they once were, before Roger’s marriage, before the twins. It was in the top seeds’ dressing room and Nole hadn’t been far off, making some joke to Tipsarevic who laughed too loudly, glancing towards Roger. Roger didn’t notice. He was watching Rafa lay out his iPod and his headphones beside his towel, ready for after his shower.

“Hey, Raf,” said Roger, and even though Rafa was already in the match zone, his mind on this guy Rosol, he turned and smiled.

“Rogelio,” he said, and they clasped hands.

That wasn’t the moment. Rafa feels his toes sink into sand as the water comes and goes, comes and goes. It was when he emerged from the showers, towel slung over his shoulder and his mind now narrowed down, focused only on the match and the pain in his knee. He was barely aware of the people around him; he had the impression that Novak was gone simply because it was quieter. He pulled on his shorts and his shirt and sat down to put on his socks, and that was the moment. Roger came out of the showers, his towel slung low across his hips, and Rafa didn’t mean to, but when he looked up his eyes raked all the way up from the trail of hair below Roger’s navel, the narrow waist, the broadening chest, the wide shoulders, and then to Roger’s face. His eyes were dark and there was a faint trace of a smile around his mouth, something complicit, knowing, something hot. Rafa felt a charge flicker between them, a charge he recognised from years before, from moments just like this. He could not quite give it a name; interest, yes, desire, yes, but these were not quite right. There was something playful there too, as if it was a game, this thing between them. A game they had not played in a long time, but one as familiar as tennis.

“Good luck out there,” said Roger, softly.

Rafa nodded. “Gracias,” he said.

He has the feeling, thinking about it now, that they were saying something else altogether. But he lost, and he left, and he hasn’t seen Roger since.

Rafa flips open his phone again, his toes buried in sand. The water is cool and inky blue. _Good luck_ , he writes. And _I hope you win. :)_ He presses send.

Even before he has his phone back in his pocket, it buzzes again. _See you in the US, I hope_ , it says.

 _I hope so too_ , writes Rafa.

 

He doesn’t play Toronto or Cincinatti, so he gets to New York early to try to play himself onto the surface. The city is hot and greasy and grey skies hang low overhead. Smells seem to linger in the streets, around the restaurants and street vendors and trash cans and subway vents. On the court, his shirt sticks to him with sweat. Toni complains about the humidity and then he complains about the air conditioning. Titín rolls his eyes and slaps his notebook open on the dining table in the hotel room.

“It’s good,” he says. “Your movement is good, and there’s no pain.” He looks up at Rafa. “Right?”

“No pain,” says Rafa. “Not much, anyway.” He shrugs. There’s an ache, now and then, but no twinges. Nothing dangerous. There’s some newspaper magazine supplement thrown on the table and on the front is a picture of Roger with Anna Wintour. Something about New York Fashion Week. Roger is wearing a trim-cut dark grey suit with an open shirt collar. Rafa stares hard at the look on his face, that small smile, as if he knows something and isn’t telling.

“Preparation is definitely on track,” says Titín, nodding and adding a note to something in his notebook.

“We need to work on footwork,” says Toni. He’s sitting on the sofa with his legs and arms crossed.

“I know,” says Rafa.

“Good movement isn’t good enough,” adds Toni.

Rafa puts his head in his hands, his elbows on the table. “I know,” he says again, making an effort to keep the irritation out of his voice. He pulls the magazine towards him. There are more pictures inside, one with Mirka. She’s smiling and tanned and she’s wearing something pale and floaty, something cut perfectly for her. Her hair falls in glossy waves around her face. Roger’s hand is on her waist.

“You’re fine getting into position,” continues Toni, as if imparting some insider knowledge. “But turning, getting out of position, getting ready for the next one, that’s still a problem.”

“Oh my god, Toni!” says Rafa. “I know, okay? You don’t have to tell me what I already know!” He stands up, pushing the magazine away irritably.

Toni looks impassive, Rafa’s annoyance washing over him like a child’s tantrum, which makes Rafa even angrier. Titín looks up at him, worried. Carlos Costa is staring hard at the floor and Benito has the Financial Times in front of his face. Rafa can’t tell if he’s really absorbed in it or if he’s just pretending.

“You know what,” says Rafa. “I think I need some air or something. I’m going for a walk.”

“You’ll be mobbed,” says Titín.

“Around the hotel. Whatever,” says Rafa. He feels for his key card in his back pocket and then leaves. Toni is protesting that they still have work to do but Rafa closes the door behind him and he can’t hear Toni’s voice anymore.

 

There’s a bar by the pool on the roof and Rafa orders a coke. A pale haze hangs over the city, as if colours are bleeding out under the grey skies. There’s salt on the air and Rafa can see the river. He sits by the glass railing, his feet up on a chair opposite, and if people are staring at Rafael Nadal sitting alone in a hotel bar, he doesn’t care. His phone buzzes and it’s Titín asking if he wants company. Rafa doesn’t reply. Overhead a wheeling seagull cries out something harsh and loud and lonely.

There was a time when Rafa had thought it was building up to something with Roger. Once, here in New York, he had been sure of it. He was not naïve, he knew they had flirted since he was a teenager. He could see that Roger knew it too, that he felt it. That look on his face when he saw Rafa, as if he knew something but wasn’t telling. As if he knew that Rafa knew it, too. A waitress puts a candle on the table he’s slouched at and presses her lips together in a quick smile. “Can I get you anything else, sir?” she asks. Rafa’s been nursing his coke.

“Sure,” he shrugs. “Another one. Thanks.”

She comes back in a moment and puts it by his arm. That time with Don King, back in 2008, when they had their hands clasped together in front of the photographers, he could feel it on Roger’s skin, could see it in his eyes, the simmering heat that coursed through both of them. He had let himself imagine it, then: falling into bed with Roger, his body hot and hard beneath his hands, running his tongue along his cock and then straddling him, or pushing Roger’s legs apart and taking him on his back, or anything, anything. Tasting his mouth and his come and his skin and hearing the sounds he made in the darkness. Rafa’s dreams became as feverish as New York heat and he waited for the moment that Roger left Mirka behind in their hotel room and came to his.

It didn’t happen. The year rolled on into the next and then it was too late, too agonisingly late, and Mirka’s pregnancy began to show. And Rafa wondered if he had been imagining having sex with Roger at the very moment he was screwing his future wife.

The day grows dark early under the clouds and the haze fades to amber as the streetlights come on below. The pool is empty and an evening crowd is trickling into the bar. He begins to feel out of place, alone and wearing shorts and trainers. He’s hungry, anyway. David and Feli and Ferru come to his room later that night to play playstation and he doesn’t sleep until after one in the morning. The next day he sleeps in the car on the way to Flushing Meadows. Toni is still stony-faced but even he can’t fail to be a little impressed at the improvements Rafa brings to the practice court. There are qualifier matches out on some courts and Rafa spots Grigor Dimitrov beating some kid he doesn’t recognise. Watching Dimitrov is like watching Roger’s shadow. He doesn’t float as Roger does, but he has that whip-fast forehand, that butterfly backhand. It’s like meeting a stranger and recognising something in them that you already know.

 

And then he once more recognises the look in Roger’s eyes in the locker room, that enigmatic flirtation. “Hey,” says Roger, slapping a hand to Rafa’s arm in greeting. His chest is bare again, his shorts slung low across his hips. 

“You won silver!” says Rafa, clasping Roger’s hand. It’s the first time he’s seen him since the Olympics. “Congratulations.”

Roger takes it in stride. “Yeah,” he says, shrugging. “Thanks.” They talk about the Olympics and the heat and the city, and Roger says he’s got no plans for dinner and why doesn’t Rafa join him in that Japanese place he loves.

And Rafa says, “Sure,” and laughs a little. “You want to meet Spanish time or Swiss time?” and Roger says, “How about New York time? Eight o’clock?”

Rafa nods and says, “Sí, that’s good, see you there.”

“Yeah, and bring Maria Francisca, if she’s here, and whoever,” says Roger as he walks away. “We’ll leave the girls with the nanny.”

“Sure,” says Rafa, and he watches as Roger grins for a second, bright and wide as if he’s made some kind of joke that they alone understand, and then turns and walks away.

 

He holds a menu in his hands but he doesn’t need to look at it. The maître d’ gave him a smile when he came in, recognising him for years now, and then his eyes opened a little in surprise when he was followed not by Toni and his team but by Roger Federer.

“I think she’s got a bug or something,” Roger was saying. “So Mirka stayed. We hate to leave either of them when they’re ill, but I can’t afford to get sick now, so…” he shrugged.

“Mirka doesn’t mind?” asked Rafa. He was following a waiter to a table towards the back where they’d be away from the window, from the street.

“No, not at all,” said Roger. “She understands. And hey, where’s Maria Francisca? Or the rest of your team?”

“Mary’s not here,” said Rafa. “And, you know…” They sat down and took the menus. Rafa waited until the waiter was gone. “Sometimes it’s nice to, I don’t know. Get a little space, no?”

Roger nodded, and again that little smile. So now here they sit opposite each other at a table in a restaurant in New York. The table is a dark wood and in front of each of them is a square plate, perfectly white. Matching chopstick rests cradle wooden chopsticks with silver handles. There was one time in Rome like this, when they shared a table, just the two of them, though that one was round and covered in a tablecloth with a blue print pattern. They ate pasta and mussels from the shell and drank a Pinot Grigio that Roger ordered and soaked up the oil and vinegar on their plates with fresh bread. Here, there’s a minimalist arrangement of orchids on the table and he can smell ginger and soy and lacquer polish and something else, maybe the faintest scent of Roger’s cologne. Rafa rolls up the sleeves of his pressed shirt to just under his elbows.

“What’s good?” says Roger, scanning the menu.

“Everything,” says Rafa, and Roger looks at him and smiles.

“Yes?” he says. “Then you order for me. I trust you.” He closes the menu and puts it to one side, leaning forward onto his elbows. His hair gleams in the low light. Rafa pushes his own curls back behind his ears.

“You like everything?” he asks. “On the menu?”

Roger laughs. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I do.”

 

Later, when Roger casually suggests a nightcap in Rafa’s suite—they don’t drink coffee this late or scotch or brandy ever—Rafa knows. He knows. So when he closes the door and Roger pushes him against it before he’s even turned the light on, he’s not surprised. He pauses, though, in the dim half-light, Roger’s breath on his face. He puts his hands on Roger’s waist and roughly pulls him closer. “You did this on purpose,” he says, and Roger breathes out a laugh.

“No,” he says. “But I hoped.” He grazes his cheek against Rafa’s. “Why did you come to dinner alone?” 

Rafa closes his teeth against Roger’s jawline. “For this,” he says. “For you.”

In Mallorca, when it was still the early days, they had all had dinner together, Rafa and Xisca, Roger and Mirka, and Carlos Costa and Tony Godsick and some other people. Toni had rolled his eyes and stayed home when Rafa asked him along. That night they ate Mallorcan seafood and saffron rice and sobrassada and salads and they drank beer and Rafa felt light-headed half way down the second. “Do you remember,” he says, after they fuck, “that time in Manacor?”

Roger is half dozing, he’s touching his fingertips lightly against Rafa’s back. “The Battle of the Surfaces?” he says.

“Sí,” says Rafa. He’s sprawled against Roger, face against his shoulder. They’re still sweaty and there’s come on the sheets but neither of them cares. Rafa feels supple and boneless.

Roger opens his eyes. “What about it?” he says. 

“I thought maybe it would be then,” says Rafa.

“With everyone around?” says Roger. He’s still smiling a little all the time and he smiles wider now.

Rafa shrugs. “We could have found a way,” he says.

Roger kisses him, hot-mouthed and languorous. “I guess we could,” he says. “There were lots of times we could have found a way.”

 

“I remember,” says Roger—they are in London now for the World Tennis Finals and outside it is cold—“I remember,” he says, as they lie warm in a London bed, “those piratas you used to wear, the shape of your ass—” He licks along the curve from the top of Rafa’s thigh to the base of his back.

“My ass is still the same,” says Rafa, laughing into the pillow, his knuckles white where he grips the headboard.

“Mmm,” says Roger. “I don’t know, let me—” Another flat-tongued trail from thigh up and over his ass to the dip of his spine and Rafa’s breath is shaky on the exhale. Roger is lying behind him. He spreads his legs and raises his hips and Roger laughs a little, quietly, and runs his thumbs down between Rafa’s ass cheeks. “Oh yes,” he murmurs. “I guess it is the same.” Rafa looks back over his shoulder to watch Roger bury his face like he’s eating a peach. His dick is hard against the sheets and he’s arching his back and Roger is mouthing and licking him, and Roger loves it, and that makes Rafa harder. When he comes on the sheets he collapses and Roger goes to rinse his mouth, and by the time he comes back Rafa is ready for him again—he’s not quite hard but he wants Roger inside him—and Roger fucks him until the headboard bangs loud against the wall. “I love your ass,” Roger whispers later, like it’s the most romantic thing in the world. “Those Armani ads you did, in the underwear?” he says. “They nearly killed me.”

Rafa grins. “Oh yes?” he says, drawing it out, teasing.

“Yes,” says Roger. He’s lying with his arms crossed against the pillow, his eyes on Rafa’s face.

“I tell you a secret,” says Rafa, and Roger quirks an eyebrow. “When I do these photos, I was thinking of you.” 

“Were you thinking of me licking you?” says Roger. He leans in against Rafa’s neck and murmurs, “Were you thinking of me fucking you?”

He thought of how awkward he was at first in front of the camera, how difficult he found it, until the photographer said to him, “Think of someone you want to fuck, Rafa. Think of your girlfriend, yeah? You’re doing this for her.” But Rafa didn’t think of Xisca. He thought of Roger watching him. He felt Roger’s eyes rake over him as if he was really there and the photographer said, “Yes, that’s it! You’ve got it!” He felt his body light up and he moved as they wanted him to, he let them watch him, his eyes half closed. Then later, back at the hotel, he stood naked in front of the full length mirror in the ensuite and ran the palm of his hand over his own hips and ass and ended up with his fist around his own cock, his other hand slicked up and two fingers inside himself, thinking of Roger looking at him and licking him and fucking him.

 

Rafa tells no one. In Melbourne they walk past each other at the club and Mirka looks at him strangely and he hears her murmur something to Roger; he recognises his own name but he doesn’t understand the rest. The next time they meet, Myla and Charlene say “Hi, Rafa!” and he feels a stab of guilt in his gut. But he can’t make that matter later that night when he’s lying on his back and Roger is holding him down and pushing deep inside him. “What do you tell her?” he asks, later.

Roger sighs. He stares at the ceiling and says, “I tell her we’re talking about ATP stuff. Or that while she’s out with her friends, I’ll just hang out with you and some other guys and we’ll leave the girls with the nanny. Or anything, really.” He shakes his head. “They’re all stupid excuses. I’m pretty sure she knows.” He looks at Rafa. “What about Xisca?”

“Mary is not the problem,” says Rafa. “It’s Toni. He would be very angry, I think.” He curls into Roger, puts his mouth against his shoulder. “He is always angry at things he doesn’t understand.”

They are quiet for a moment. The room is suffused with a gentle half-glow from the dimmed lights over the bed. The pillows are scented with lavender, but stronger than that is the earthy smell of their bodies pressed together under the sheets, sticky with sweat and spit and come. There is a sheen on Roger’s skin and his eyes gleam in their shadows. “Why did we do this now?” he says. 

“The way you look at me,” says Rafa, quietly. He touches Roger’s face with his fingertips. He kisses him.

“And the way you look at me,” says Roger. “Always so hungry. Like I’m something you want to eat.”

“I do,” says Rafa, smiling now. “I am always hungry for you, no?” Roger is hot against his skin, he is strong and soft.

“This was always going to happen,” says Roger, rolling so that he lies on top of Rafa once more. Rafa feels him growing hard again.

“Yes, it was,” he says, as Roger begins to move against him. “I think it was.”


End file.
